Arctic nations meet as melting sea ice opens new fishing frontiers

OTTAWA — A Canadian delegation will meet with foreign government officials in Greenland on Monday to work towards reducing the impact of Arctic fishing before it even begins.

Huge regions of the central Arctic Ocean – international waters off the coast of Canada that were once locked in ice year-round but are now opening up during the summer months – could soon be a site for commercial fishing as Arctic ice melts faster than ever predicted. And there are no rules in place to ensure the resources in the fragile ecosystem will be harvested responsibly.

“There’s no science yet telling us how many fish are up there and so starting fishing a population where you don’t even know the baseline, that could be a disaster,” said Scott Highleyman, international Arctic director of the American Pew Environment Group.

Recognizing the potential security and environmental implications of unregulated fishing in new frontiers of the Arctic Ocean, government representatives from the five Arctic coastal countries — Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark and Norway — met in Washington last spring to draft an Arctic fisheries agreement. The countries are meeting for a second time this week to further discuss the agreement, which would stop any commercial fishing in the central Arctic Ocean until more is known about the ecosystem.

Fisheries Minister Gail Shea, who will not be attending the Greenland meeting, said the discussions are “a significant opportunity” for countries to ensure future Arctic fisheries are sustainable and said Canada supports an agreement that would temporarily ban commercial fishing until governments have a better sense of existing fish stocks and how they are changing.

“We continue to promote a proactive and precautionary approach,” she said.

Daniel Pauly, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s centre for fishery who petitioned the governments of the central Arctic nations to create an Arctic fisheries agreement, said scientists need to know what fish are in the central Arctic Ocean and how fast they’re reproducing before governments decide whether to allow commercial fishing. He said the emerging waters will likely yield huge catches initially – probably of Arctic cod – but that this is unlikely to last.

“In extremely cold waters like the Arctic, you don’t have as high productivity, you don’t have a fast growth of everything. You can have lots of fish that have accumulated from years and years before, but you don’t have a high production to replace what is lost,” he said.

Highleyman said an agreement to mandate such research before fishing begins by global fishing nations such as China and Japan represents a unique chance to “fix something before it becomes a big problem” and stressed that waiting to implement fishing regulations could have catastrophic implications.

“Right now it’s a relatively easy thing to do. There’s no jobs at stake, nobody has a fishing history,” he said. “If we wait, then fishing fleets will show up one day, there won’t be any rules and then those fishing fleets and countries will have a fishing history and it’ll be a lot harder to draw the rules up afterward.”

He’s not yet sure when “afterward” is. Parts of the central Arctic Ocean have been opening up over the last 15 years – particularly in the Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Russia – and scientists are unsure how long it will be until areas of fishable depth are open year-round.

“We can’t predict if it’ll be five or 10 years, but the history of the world tells us it will happen,” Highleyman said.

He will be part of the American delegation in Greenland this week. Canada will be represented by government officials from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Trade and Development Canada and the Inuit Circumpolar Council.